Getting right The temperature in bed can be tricky. Feeling too hot or cold makes it harder to come down and can wake you up earlier. Since our mental and physical health depends on sleep, that’s a problem. Eight Sleep has the answer. The Eight Sleep Pod 4 is a temperature-controlled mattress cover that tracks your body as you snooze, with a hub that pumps cool or warm water through the cover to help you stay in noddy land for longer.
When I reviewed its predecessor, the Eight Sleep Pod 3 (7/10, WIRED Recommends), I was wary of the billionaire biohacking buzz, but it won me over. Despite the increased comfort, the best sleep trackers all tell the same story: My wife and I slept longer and got more deep and REM sleep with the Eight Sleep Pod than without. The Eight Sleep Pod 4 brings some welcome upgrades, including greater comfort, quieter operation, and handy tap controls, so you don’t need to reach for your phone at night.
Photo: Simon Hill
Sadly, better sleep doesn’t come cheap. The Pod 4 Cover and Queen-size Bed Hub costs $2,599, but you also have to pick up a year’s subscription to Autopilot for an additional $199. If you already have a subscription, you can transfer it to a new Pod, but you can no longer buy an Eight Sleep Pod without taking out an Autopilot subscription. The UK Super King I as tested costs £2,699, while the Autopilot year is £199. It’s a real investment, but good sleep can make a difference.
Hitting Hay
The Eight Sleep Pod 4 Cover and Hub comes in two large boxes. The mattress cover has a rubber tube inside and a soft, opaque, black material on top. It stretches to fit snugly around your mattress, and the tubing must be routed from the top to connect to the hub. The hub is about the size of a desktop PC, with a fabric front and a large 8 logo. The hub is the brain of the operation, and cools or heats the water and pumps it around the cover.
Setup with the Pod 4 was similar but much faster than the Pod 3. You pull the cylinder from the top of the hub and pour water up to the fill line. The boot process is down to about 10 minutes from several hours in the previous version. You connect the hub to your Wi-Fi using the mobile app. The cover of the Pod 4 is much softer than the Pod 3, and the hub is much quieter. It never broke 30 decibels when measured. It makes a subtle noise, like the white noise of sleep.
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